THE END OF THE WORLD COMING.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 2785, 20 September 1910, Page 7

THE END OF THE WORLD COMING.

THROUGH AWFUL HEAT, INTENSE COLD, OR FLOOD.

Some time since it was prognosti-

cated by Professor Langley that we were nearing the end of the world through the cessation of the sun to radiate heat. This, of course, would spell impossible cold for the human race.

The length of the earth's day is slowly increasing through the retarding influence of the tides produced, by the moon. To be sure, this effect is so slight that it has not been directly perceptible since accurate methods of measuring the.time of the earth's revolution on its axis have been observed. But that it might be taking place is as sure as that friction will stop a railway train when the steam is turned off. The tides raised by the moon's attraction are distributed by the continents so as to present many anomalies, but when considered in themselves they act the same as a wave three feet high constantly running in an opposite direction to the revolution of the earth, and so by friction retarding its motion. Astronomers are agreed that similar tides produc•ed on the moon have reduced her revolution on her axis to a period of 28 days.

Eventually the revolution of the earth will be reduced so that our day will be several times longer than now. When that time comes the nights will be so cold that nothing can stand it, and if they could the days will be so hot that what is left by the cold will be destroyed by the heat. But that time, also, is so far in the future that the present generation may put it out of their minds. This catastrophe will not arrive for many million years yet. Indeed, before that time arrives the sun, as Professor Langley has already told us, will have become so far cooled off that we shall be indifferent, to everything else that happens. i THE EARTH BEING WASHED j AWAY. I Another limit to the future of the habitable portion of the earth is brought to light by the rapid progress of erosion that is going on all over the land surface of the world. Wallace estimates that one foot of the earth's surface is, on the average, washed away by the streams every 3,000 years and deposited at the bottom of the ocean. This , amounts to more than 300 feet in a million years. As the main elevation of Europe is 671 feet, and that of North America is 748 feet, it follows that by the operations of present forces Europe will be washed into the sea in 2,000,000 years, and America in 3,000,000 years. What Providence has in store for us after that, no man knows. If the sunken portion shall rise at the end of that period,, ,as it did at the end of the coal period, there will be dry land to live on, but it is doubtful if it have such stores of iron and coal as have blessed the present race of human beings. The world, however, is concerned with impending catastrophies nearer at hand. The prosperity of the pre sent time is largely due to the rapidity with which we are using up i the reserved stores of nature upon or near the surface of the earth. Thus geology, whilt it opens up to mankind the stores of good that are buried for safekeeping in the depths of the earth, points to their limited quantity, and calls upon men to use them economically and leave as much

as possible for future generations.— "Popular Science Siftings."